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Text of the page (random words):
is mean about my life if you re thinking that way you can t do it for a day much less for a lifetime to dig really deep into zen into an art into a relationship into your work you have to be able to just do something over and over and over again without asking why this is true from the moment of waking up if you ve ever heard the alarm in the morning and lain in bed thinking why why do i even get up in the morning then you re being too smart for your own good keizan says between sky and earth only this whole body is seen we should understand this is exactly the way that dogen talks about buddhanature there s nothing but this we all have a reference point we have that feeling of separation an idea that there s something else keizan is saying there is nothing else this thing that s waking up in the morning is infinitely vast not because you re important but because everything is important this one is without compare he has completely died eyes clear she stands nowhere where is there any dust what can obstruct such a one this image comes up a lot in zen discussion as well the dust you can only have dust on something if something isn t the whole thing and you can only have dust on something if something is capable of being unclean but if we re talking about something that permeates and we re also talking about dust it doesn t work clear water has no back or front space has no inside or outside completely clear its own luminosity shines before form and emptiness were fabricated we like to talk about form and we like to talk about emptiness according to keizan they re both made up objects of mind and mind itself have no place to exist again you can only have a location you can only have a reference point if you re distinct and if you re separate this has always already been so but it is still without a name the great teacher the third ancestor sengcan temporarily called it mind and the venerable nagarjuna once called it body enlightened essence and form giving rise to the bodies of all the buddhas it has no more or less about it this is symbolized by the full moon but it is this mind which is enlightenment itself the luminosity of this mind shines throughout the past and brightens as the present nagarjuna used this subtle symbol for the samadhi of all the buddhas but this mind is signless nondual and differences between forms are only apparent the moon has been a useful tool for talking about form and emptiness or absolute and relative the moon is always full and yet it s also useful to say that it s not that it s always in flux that it s always changing the moon shines but not really it just reflects something bigger we have all sorts of stories about the moon we look up and we say oh it s at this stage or it s at this stage in the same way we look at our lives and we imagine we re at this stage or at this stage i m still young oh now i m in middle age we can see my peak we can locate that moment in the past or perhaps we can see that peak just around the corner that s one way of looking at your life but there s another in which it s just full and it s always full and it can t be anything but that and like the moon it s not that it s shining from within it s made visible by the things around it i really love this text i love how keizan lays out the foundation of the practice remember these are instructions for zazen he s saying know thyself first first know who you are not in a personal way not the you that has a name the other one that s the one who s going to sit like this that s the one who makes this gesture of awakening share this tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email more print opens in new window print share on tumblr like loading 10 comments posted in uncategorized no back or front no inside or outside zazen yōjinki part 3 aug 6 this is the third in a six part series on keizan s notes on what to be aware of in zazen you can click here for part 1 and part 2 the original talk can be found on the zns podcast 23 after do nothing at all don t fabricate any things with the six senses keizan continues with this who is this its name is unknown it cannot be called body it cannot be called mind trying to think of it the thought vanishes trying to speak of it words die it is like a fool an idiot it is as high as a mountain deep as the ocean without peak or depths its brilliance is unthinkable it shows itself silently between sky and earth only this whole body is seen who is this what a great way to start anything it cannot be called body it cannot be called mind it s a common refrain in the buddhist world that the fundamental delusion is i that that s where everything begins this idea that there s a me and that this me is separate from you that s usually how we talk about it that i think i m here and that you think you re there and according to buddhist teachings that is delusional but if we look closely at that delusion we see there s something even more fundamental it s not just that i think i m me and that i m distinct it s that i think i am somehow separate from the rest of me where do you locate i now if a bee stings you maybe you have a brief moment of clarity and consider that maybe just maybe i is the back of your hand or maybe i is your knee but if we re walking down the street on an ordinary day i is just this pink wrinkled mass and we re carrying it around in our head it has these little windows that look out onto the world and it drives this vehicle that has tools like hands and feet that s i if you re really honest with yourself you probably imagine that if there was an accident and you lost your hand well that would be sad but you would still be you if i lost my arm i would still be me if she had a heart transplant she would still be her but if my brain were damaged then maybe i wouldn t be me anymore we have a very limited idea of where we are located of what it is that is this identity keizan says it s not body and it s not mind trying to think of it the thought vanishes he s describing the idea that a thing can t perform its own function on itself if i am something bigger than my brain then this same i can t turn and look inward the whole organism has to do it it s like doing a flip trying to speak of it words die i can try to speak about myself and in doing so i assert that the speaker is not the same as what s being spoken of there s a gap keizan is saying there is no gap you can t step outside you can t take that step outside of who you are he s inviting us instead to really occupy that space whatever that is and soon he s going to say that that space is immeasurably huge he adds it is like a fool an idiot this idea of the fool comes up a lot at least in zen literature and often it s used as a pairing against the scholar or the academic the idea being that the scholar is dissecting buddhism whereas the fool might be actually practicing buddhism even if he or she doesn t really get all the particular doctrinal nuances of it that s one way to look at this but fool and idiot are also used is to describe someone or some functioning that isn t self reflective the intelligent person sits on a hilltop and contemplates her own existence this is navel gazing we look at our bellybuttons and we say who am i what is this what is this all about the fool in this version of fool isn t doing that the fool isn t trying to draw lines between inside and outside the fool isn t trying to dissect the self the fool is just moving about freely unhindered unburdened by these questions that seem so important it is as high as a mountain deep as the ocean but then immediately he says without peak or depths so it s as high as that and it s as deep as that but it doesn t have height and it doesn t have depth its brilliance is unthinkable it shows itself silently between sky and earth only this whole body is seen in shobogenzo bussho buddhanature dogen performs all sorts of verbal acrobatics to talk about something that is everything he says it s this and this and this and then he says it s not this and it s not this and it s not this what he s pointing to when he speaks of buddhanature is something that is synonymous with reality not separate from it it s not a flavor it s not a layer it s not an essence at the center it goes all the way through to the center and all the way out here keizan is taking a different approach instead of talking about buddhanature which feels very abstract he s talking about your mind and your body and he s saying this is that your mind he s saying is without borders your body is without borders don t imagine yourself to be small don t imagine yourself to be distinct don t imagine yourself to be separate we re being asked to see something and he s saying this flat out that cannot be seen because the i can t look at itself we do try but it s like an eyeball trying to look at itself this one is without compare he has completely died eyes clear she stands nowhere she has no location where is there any dust what can obstruct such a one dust is used a lot because there can only ever be dust on something something can only be impure if it s separate from something else but if something is the ground of everything then there s nothing that can make it dirty and nothing that can make it clean it s like walking on a path and saying oh this path is filthy yes but it s filthy all the way down that s all you ve got you can just as easily say that it s pristine because dirt has no other way clear water has no back or front space has no inside or outside these are so obvious but for me every time i read them i have to stop and think about them completely clear its own luminosity shines before form and emptiness were fabricated objects of mind and mind itself have no place to exist keizan is describing something that has no reference point we can t locate it as north south east or west we can t say it looks like this from the front or it looks like this from the back we have such an interesting notion of time we say things like since time began i don t know it isn t really my field but that makes no sense to me certain things have beginnings and certain things have endings it s not clear to me that time has a start it s not clear to me that time has an end we try so desperately to try to parse time to imagine that time is relative to a starting point and to an ending point it s one of the main functions of our minds but if you were immortal if you knew that you were never never never never going to die your understanding of time would be completely different as we age we experience time as going faster that was first explained to me very simply when you re five a year of your life is twenty percent of your life it feels like it takes a long time to go through a year when you re ninety a year of your life is getting close to one percent so even though it s the same year you look up and it just went but that also happens in part because you re thinking i m close i m ninety i m filling this glass of water and i m almost at the top but if you knew that it would never be full if you knew that it would never ever ever end there would be no time going quickly and there would be no time going slowly you could experience it however you wanted there would be no reference point there would be no horizon line you could just experience this moment as something full and long and then you could blink and it would be as if a month had passed there would be no fixed points any more you would just always be now keizan is describing something like that he s inviting us to imagine ourselves as having no fixed reference points no birth no death no location it s really really hard there are traditions that really explore this practices within buddhism in which you actually try to move your consciousness to your bellybutton for example and out of your brain or to your kneecap it s a fun game just don t do it while you re driving keizan is also attacking the idea of absolute and relative which we talk about often in buddhism we say there s absolute truth and there s relative truth we say there s form and there s emptiness in the heart sutra we say that form is emptiness and emptiness is form but that s actually not an acknowledgement of absolute and relative it s an argument against them there s one truth and because you can t step outside of it that truth is essentially invisible as truth when we say that there s absolute truth and relative truth that s a game we play so that we can step out if i stand over here then truth looks like this and if i stand over here then truth looks like this but again that s not truth that s just a narrative we do this with everything we cut apart everything so that we can dissect it so that we can look at it so that we can say i get what this part is i get what this part is but it s like trying to understand a cookie by understanding flour and then by really understanding sugar and then by really understanding an egg that somehow if you fully grasp these ingredients you ll get what a cookie is we know that s not true they cannot be separate it doesn t work that way no matter how much you know about each of the three if you never eat a cookie you ll never get what a cookie is this has always already been so but it is still without a name again because it can t name itself the great teacher the third ancestor sengcan temporarily called it mind and the venerable nagarjuna once called it body he s saying yes sometimes we talk about this thing as mind and maybe sometimes we talk about this thing as body but that s provisional language enlightened essence and form giving rise to the bodies of all the buddhas it has no more and no less about it it cannot be measured in degrees what i love about this is that we come to zazen with the idea that by sitting in zazen we re going to somehow penetrate delusion that we re going to take up this practice and that will move us beyond delusion and what he s saying these are his zazen instructions by the way and he still hasn t said a single thing about what to do in zazen the first thing he s saying is first transcend delusion this is a theme that comes up over and over again zazen in our deepest understanding of what zazen is is not something separate it s not a place where we work something out it s fundamentally complete and something that s fundamentally complete within this definition it s not even good enough to say that it s vast vast still implies a container it s without limit so when he teaches zazen he says start there it s a big idea start there sit down on a cushion and completely let go of your idea of me and that and big and small and forward and backward and front and back and up and down sit here at the center not the center of something that has limits but the center being the whole thing we have the teaching that one inch buddha is one inch zazen that is to say buddha is always buddha there s no...
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